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Lunchtime Lectures: V&A Storehouse and the Torrijos Ceiling
This talk is part of the V&A Academy Lunchtime Lecture Series. No booking is required.
To celebrate the opening of V&A East Storehouse, this lecture will spotlight one of its six large-scale objects: the Torrijos ceiling (object number 407-1905).
The Torrijos ceiling is a spectacular example of a painted and gilded carpentry ceiling, made in Spain in the late 15th century. Ceilings made in this technique adapt craft skills and design traditions from the Islamic world to European architectural styles and construction methods.
The V&A's ceiling was originally one of four made in the same technique, all commissioned by Gutierre de Cárdenas and Teresa Enríquez for their palace in Torrijos. This couple were members of the court of the Catholic Monarchs, Isabel of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon. At the same time as the Torrijos ceilings were created, Gutierre was heavily involved in the Christian conquest of Granada from the Nasrids, the last Islamic dynasty to rule on the Iberian Peninsula.
This talk will uncover the history of the ceilings, the fate of the Torrijos palace, and how this example entered the V&A collections.
Mariam Rosser-Owen is the Curator for the Arab World collections at the V&A, specialising in the arts of the Islamic West. She was the Principal Investigator for the research project 'Crafting Medieval Spain: the Torrijos Ceiling in the global museum.'
